Small traders advise govt to improve processing

By Correspondent

22nd May 2012

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Small-scale entrepreneurs have call upon the government to improve processing industries in order to stimulate economic growth in the country.

The call was made yesterday in Dar es Salaam a bead trader Swagon Suleiman alias “chekecha”. He said improve processing industries would reduce the burden of ordering raw materials from outside the country.

Suleiman added, “Purchasing raw materials from neighboring countries like Kenya contributes to tagging my commodities at high prices in order to gain profit”.

According to him, processing industries can also increase the efficiency of a business by ensuring availability of raw materials, whereby manufactures are able to produce without fearing shortage; hence increase revenue.

For her part, Pia Innocent, a Tie and Dye cloth manufacturer said in a separate interview that raw material were also a problem and sometimes she had been forced to travel to neighbouring Malawi or Kenya to source them.

Innocent stressed, “This is really a problem because I’m forced to sell my goods at a higher price in order to gain profit because without doing that I cannot survive and my business will eventually collapse”.

However, a culture ornament maker Maina Malliya said, “I purchase my raw materials from Arusha, but I think they come from neighboring countries because I have not heard a company in our country producing beads and the suppliers provide them lavishly”.

He said availability of processing industries in country would facilitate production of different commodities at reasonable prices for all Tanzanians at all levels.